Chalcolithic Period

Chalcolithic Period

• The end of the Neolithic period saw the use of 

metals of which copper was the fi rst. A culture 

based on the use of stone and copper arrived called 

the Chalcolithic phase meaning the stone-copper 

phase.

• The fi rst full-fl edged village communities evolved 

in the Chalcolithic phase which was chronologically 

antecedents to Harappan people. Rafi que Mughal 

of Pakistan named there settlements as Early 

Harappan culture.

• Though some Chalcolithic cultures are 

contemporary of Harappan and some of pre-

Harappan cultures but most Chalcolithic cultures 

are post-Harappan.

• Though Chalcolithic cultures mostly used stone and 

copper implements, the Harappans used bronze (an 

alloy of copper and tin) on such a scale that Harappan 

culture is known as a Bronze Age Culture.

• Apart from stone tools, hand axes and other objects 

made from copperware were also used.

• The evidences of relationship with Afghanistan, 

Iran and probably Central India and visible at 

Mehargarh.

• The Chalcolithic culture at many places continued 

till 700 B.C. nd sometime around 1200 B.C. the use 

of iron seems to have begun in the Chalcolithic level 

itself. The use of iron subsequently revolutionized 

the culture making progress and by 800 B.C. a 

distinct Iron Age came into existence

• The Chalcolithic people used different types of 

pottery of which black and red pottery was most 

popular. It was wheel made and painted with 

white line design.

• The Chalcolithic people were not acquainted with 

burnt bricks and generally lived in thatched houses. 

It was a village economy.

• They venerated the mother goddess and 

worshipped the bull.

Sites

• Important sites of this stage are spread in 

Rajasthan, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar, 

Madhya Pradesh, etc.

• The Chalcolithic culture in Rajasthan is known as 

Banas culture after the river of the same name and 

is also known as Ahar culture after the typesite.

• In the Malwa region the important Chalcolithic 

sites are Nagda, Kayatha, Navdatoli, and Eran. 

Mud-plastered fl oors are a prominent feature of 

Kayatha.

• The Kayatha culture is characterized by a sturdy 

red-slipped ware painted with designs in chocolate 

colour, a red painted buff ware and a combed ware 

bearing incised patterns.

• The Ahar people made a distinctive black-and-red 

ware decorated with white designs.

• The Malwa ware is rather coarse in fabric, but has 

a thick buff surface over which designs are made 

either in red or black.

• The Prabhas and Rangpur wares are both derived 

from the Harappan, but have a glossy surface due 

to which they are also called Lustrous Red Ware.

• Jorwe ware too is painted black-on-red but has a 

matt surface treated with a wash.

• The settlements of Kayatha cutlure are only a few 

in number, mostly located on the Chambal and its 

tributaries. They are relatively small in size and the 

biggest may be not over two hectares.

• In contrast to small Kayatha culture settlements 

those of Ahar cultures are big. At least three of 

them namely Ahar, Balathal and Gilund are of 

several hectares.

• Stone, mud bricks and mud were used for the 

construction of houses and other structures.

• Excavations reveal that Balathal was a well-

fortifi ed settlement.

• The people of Malwa culture settled mostly on 

the Narmada and its tributaries. Navdatoli, Eran 

and Nagada are the three best known settlements 

of Malwa culture. Navadatoli measures almost 

10 hectares and is one of the largest Chalcolithic 

settlements.

• It has been seen that some of these sites were 

fortifi ed and Nagada had even a bastion of mud-

bricks. Eran similarly had a fortifi cation wall with 

a moat.

• The Rangpur culture sites are located mostly on 

Ghelo and Kalubhar rivers in Gujarat.

• The Jorwe settlement is comparatively larger in 

number.

• Prakash, Daimabad and Inamgaon are some of 

the best known settlements of this culture. The 

largest of these is Daimabad which measured 20 

hectares.

• From Mesolithic culture onwards, all the culture 

types coexisted and interacted with each other.

Lifestyle

• The Chalcolithic people built rectangular and 

circular houses of mud wattled-and-daub. The 

circular houses were mostly in clusters. These 

houses and huts had roots of straw supported on 

bamboo and wooden rafters. Floors were made 

of rammed clay and huts were used for storage 

also.

• People raised cattle as well as cultivated both Kharif 

and Rabi crops in rotation. Wheat and barley were 

grown in the area of Malwa. Rice is reported to have 

been found from Inamgaon and Ahar. These people 

also cultivated jowar and bajra and so also kulthi 

ragi, green peas, lentil and green and black grams.

• Religion was an important aspect which interlinked 

all Chalcolithic cultures. The worship of mother 

goddess and the bull was in vogue. The bull cult 

seems to have been predominant in Malwa during 

the Ahar period.

• A large number of these both naturalistic as well as 

stylised lingas have been found from most of the 

sites of Chalcolithic settlements. The naturalistic 

ones may have served as votive offerings, but the 

small stylised ones may have been hung around 

the neck as the Lingayats do today.

• The Mother Goddess is depicted on a huge storage 

jar of Malwa culture in an applique design. She is 

fl anked by a woman on the right and a crocodile 

on the left, by the side of which is represented the 

shrine.

• Likewise the fiddle-shaped figurines probably 

resembling Srivatsa, the symbol of Lakshmi, the 

Goddess of wealth in historical period represent a 

mother Goddess.

• In a painted design on a pot, a deity is shown with 

dishevelled hair, recalling Rudra.

• A painting on a jar found from Daimabad shows 

a deity surrounded by animals and birds such as 

tigers and peacocks. Some scholars compare it 

with the ‘Shiva Pashupati’ depicted on a seal from 

Mohenjodaro.

Two fi gurines from Inamgaon, belonging to late 

Jorwe culture, are identifi ed as proto-Ganesh, who 

is worshipped for success. 

• Several headless figurines found at Inamgaon 

have been compared with Goddess Visira of the 

Mahabharata.

• Fire-worship seems to have been a very widespread 

phenomenon among the Chalcolithic people of 

Pre-historic India as fi re-altars have been found 

from a large number of Chalcolithic sites during 

the course of excavations.

• The occurence of pots and other funerary objects 

found along with burials of the Malwa and Jorwe 

people indicate that people had a belief in life after 

death.

• The Chalcolithic farmers had made considerable 

progress in ceramic as well as metal technology. 

The painted pottery was well made and well fi red 

in kiln, it was fi red at a temperature between 500-

700°C.

• In metal tools we fi nd axes, chisels, bangles, beads, 

etc. mostly made of copper. The copper was obtained, 

perhaps, from the Khetri mines of Rajasthan.

• Gold ornaments were extremely rare and have been 

found only in the Jorwe culture.

• An ear ornament has been found from Prabhas in 

the Godavari valley also.

• The fi nd of crucibles and pairs of tongs of copper 

at Inamgaon in Maharashtra shows the working of 

goldsmiths.

• Chalcedony drills were used for perforating beads 

of semi-precious stones.

• Lime was prepared out of Kankar and used for 

various purposes like painting houses and lining 

the storage bins, etc.

Atomic Structure

Atoms are the building blocks of elements. They are the smallest parts of an element that chemically react. The first atomic theory, proposed by John Dalton in 1808, regarded atom as the ultimate indivisible particle of matter. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, it was proved experimentally that atoms are divisible and consist of three fundamental particles: electrons, protons and neutrons. The discovery of sub-atomic particles led to the proposal of various atomic models to explain the structure of atom.

Thomson in 1898 proposed that an atom consists of uniform sphere of positive electricity with electrons embedded into it. This model in which mass of the atom is considered to be evenly spread over the atom was proved wrong by Rutherford’s famous alpha-particle scattering experiment in 1909. Rutherford concluded that atom is made of a tiny positively charged nucleus, at its centre with electrons revolving around it in circular orbits. Rutherford model, which resembles the solar system, was no doubt an improvement over Thomson model but it could not account for the stability of the atom i.e., why the electron does not fall into the nucleus. Further, it was also silent about the electronic structure of atoms i.e., about the distribution and relative energies of electrons around the nucleus. The difficulties of the Rutherford model were overcome by Niels Bohr in 1913 in his model of the hydrogen atom. Bohr postulated that electron moves around the nucleus in circular orbits. Only certain orbits can exist and each orbit corresponds to a specific energy. Bohr calculated the energy of electron in various orbits and for each orbit predicted the distance between the electron and nucleus. Bohr model, though offering a satisfactory model for explaining the spectra of the hydrogen atom, could not explain the spectra of multi-electron atoms. The reason for this was soon discovered. In Bohr model, an electron is regarded as a charged particle moving in a well defined circular orbit about the nucleus. The wave character of the electron is ignored in Bohr’s theory. An orbit is a clearly defined path and this path can completely be defined only if both the exact position and the exact velocity of the electron at the same time are known. This is not possible according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, therefore, not only ignores the dual behaviour of electron but also contradicts Heisenberg uncertainty principle. 

Erwin Schrödinger, in 1926, proposed an equation called Schrödinger equation to describe the electron distributions in space and the allowed energy levels in atoms. This equation incorporates de Broglie’s concept of wave-particle duality and is consistent with Heisenberg uncertainty principle. When Schrödinger equation is solved for the electron in a hydrogen atom, the solution gives the possible energy states the electron can occupy [and the corresponding wave function(s) (ψ) (which in fact are the mathematical functions) of the electron associated with each energy state]. These quantized energy states and corresponding wave functions which are characterized by a set of three quantum numbers (principal quantum number n, azimuthal quantum number l and magnetic quantum number ml) arise as a natural consequence in the solution of the Schrödinger equation. The restrictions on the values of these three quantum numbers also come naturally from this solution. The quantum mechanical model of the hydrogen atom successfully predicts all aspects of the hydrogen atom spectrum including some phenomena that could not be explained by the Bohr model.

According to the quantum mechanical model of the atom, the electron distribution of an atom containing a number of electrons is divided into shells. The shells, in turn, are thought to consist of one or more subshells and subshells are assumed to be composed of one or more orbitals, which the electrons occupy. While for hydrogen and hydrogen like systems (such as He+, Li2+ etc.) all the orbitals within a given shell have same energy, the energy of the orbitals in a multi-electron atom depends upon the values of n and l: The lower the value of (n + l ) for an orbital, the lower is its energy. If two orbitals have the same (n + l ) value, the orbital with lower value of n has the lower energy. In an atom many such orbitals are possible and electrons are filled in those orbitals in order of increasing energy in accordance with Pauli exclusion principle (no two electrons in an atom can have the same set of four quantum numbers) and Hund’s rule of maximum multiplicity (pairing of electrons in the orbitals belonging to the same subshell does not take place until each orbital belonging to that subshell has got one electron each, i.e., is singly occupied). This forms the basis of the electronic structure of atoms.